Before I was out of bed that morning, Frederick, Mr. Raymond's valet, came to me with the request that I should go to his master's room before I went down stairs. It was in the wing, and the third chamber of a handsome suite comprising study, dressing-room and bedroom. It was hung and curtained with red; a wood-fire was burning on the hearth; the chairs were covered with red; even the silken coverlet of the bed was red, and the only place where living, brilliant color was not seemed to be the pale shrunken face on the pillow, a little paler and more delicate than usual: the hands, too, clutching each other on the red blanket, had a look of languor and waste.
"Good-morning, Floyd," Mr. Raymond said, and then dismissed Frederick.
"But you ought not to talk, sir," expostulated the valet, "until you have had your breakfast."
The sick man made a gesture for him to leave the room, watched him go out, and then fastened his piercing black eyes on me and looked at me long and fixedly. "You saw me yesterday?" said he at last, breaking the silence.
I nodded, finding it a difficult task to speak.
"Are you a babbling child?" said he with considerable force and earnestness, "or have you enough of a man's knowledge to have learned to respect the infirmities of other men?"
"I tell no one's secrets, sir: they are not mine to tell."
He quite broke down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long at times for some of the inspiration of my youth: it comes with a terrible penalty."
I could believe it, for his face expressed such abasement and despair as I had never dreamed of.
"I know," he continued, his voice broken and husky, "that I shadow Helen's life. I know that if I had died last night she would be a luckier girl to-day than she is now. But I sha'n't last long, Floyd. Put your finger on my pulse."
I did so, and was obliged to grope for the uncertain, slow beating at his wrist. It seemed as if so little life was there it might easily flicker and go out at any moment.